ZTE Announces ‘ZTE Open’ Phones Using Firefox at Mobile World

By Tiernan Ray

China-based smartphone maker ZTE held a packed press conference this afternoon at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to discuss “ZTE Open,” a series of devices based on the freely available Firefox operating system, which has itself made quite a splash here in the last 24 hours, with the announcement of support from a number of carriers.

ZTE's head of mobile devices, He Shiyou, discussed a partnership with with carrier Telefonica to promote ZTE Open among “young people who are adventuresome.” A Telefonica representative billed ZTE Open as the first smartphone available running Firefox and said it would be coming first to Europe and Latin America.

Firefox and other operating systems that have almost no presence in the smartphone market have been speculated about recently as an alternative to Apple's (AAPL) iOS and to Google's (GOOG) Android. ZTE already sells smartphones based on Android.

The first model has rather limited specs, as Telefonica is targeting the device to “young people with limited budgets.” It uses a 1-gigahertz Qualcomm (QCOM) “MSM7225A” chipset and has a 3.5-inch screen. Telefonica believes Firefox is “not just another OS” but rather “the future of the mobile world.”

Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich talks with reporters about the prospects for open-source smartphones.

Brendan Eich, the CTO of the Mozilla organization, which developed Firefox OS over the last 18 months, made an appearance. Eich, who invented JavaScript while at Netscape, and who went on to form Mozilla, made the case that “the Web is the platform” for mobile devices. Part of the mission of Mozilla is to push Web standards instead of native smartphone applications. He remarked that reports that Facebook, for example, was unhappy with the HTML 5 standard, were “vastly exaggerated,” as Facebook's mobile Web site gets more traffic than all of its native smartphone apps do.

In response to a question about competing in apps, Eich remarked “the Web has thousands of apps,” including those in the “Firefox Marketplace.” He said Firefox OS will provide unique ways to search for an obtain HTML 5 apps on the phone.

About Tech Trader Daily

Tech Trader Daily is a blog on technology investing written by Barron’s veteran Tiernan Ray. The blog provides news, analysis and original reporting on events important to investors in software, hardware, the Internet, telecommunications and related fields. Comments and tips can be sent to: techtraderdaily@barrons.com.